A Quiet Week With A Little Admin
This continues our blog documenting the experience of finding and buying a house in France.
After three intense weeks of house hunting - from online browsing to viewings to finally agreeing on an offer - this week felt almost eerily quiet, with only a few little things to do.
Monday
We had a message that the sellers were offering us to buy their enormous TV and the ride on mower. The agent seemed concerned that we might be upset by them suggesting this when we had verbally agreed the offer to include all furniture. But neither could be assumed to fall under the category of furniture and so the request is quite reasonable.
Don’t worry Katerina, we’re happy and not going to write anything negative online!
The house has 5000 square meters of land, mainly grass, so the ride on mower is an essential. I asked for model information so that I could research comparative costs before agreeing to the suggested price. Now I am a details guy, so when instead of model information, we received photos, I was a little surprised. But you have to be prepared to do things differently. Different people, different countries, different languages, things are often not quite as you are used to or expect.
Zooming in on the ride on mower photo showed the brand and model number and a quick google search later, I found both new and used ones online for comparison. Turns out that the price suggested is 60% of what a new one would cost and seems in line with prices for used models. So that will be a yes.
Hot weather garden wisdom.
Ride on mower research indicated the benefits of not collecting the grass cuttings but spreading them thinly to mulch lawns and stop them dying in sunny climates. I never had to consider that for the 30m lawn I previously had in the slightly less sunny UK. It turns out however that my American wife knew this from her time in the searing heat of Texas.
Size does not always matter.
The enormous TV we might not want. We can’t identify the exact model from the photo sent. It is 220cm 86” model and judging by the price suggested a high end model. But we’re not high end TV people. We could buy a new TV of similar size for almost half what is being requested. We may kindly refuse that offer. We may even buy smaller!
Tuesday
Nothing house related at all. Be patient, no news is good news. Things are happening in the background.
Wednesday
Started by noticing that google mail, marked as spam an email from our mortgage broker, a known contact with frequent 2 way communication. Come on gmail you can do better.
Spam aside, they told us that we had pre approval from a bank for the mortgage. That was nice, especially after being told earlier that French banks rarely give pre-approval before the CDV is signed (CDV is the sales contract, see earlier blog for explanation). So we shared that with the Immobilier (estate agent) and said it could be shared with the sellers. Hopefully it gives them confidence in our ability to complete the purchase.
It’s also nice to know that we won’t have to cobble together the money without a mortgage as that would have stretched us quite a lot financially.
Finally the mortgage broker reminded us that we had not sent the requested last 3 years tax returns. Our 2024 tax return was not yet submitted. I had tried to do it the previous weekend but hit a problem with the online submission. So Wednesday night I did it all again. turns out Luxembourg has a new form for doing tax returns where it prompts you to enter each question in turn, online, in English if needed. 3 hours later I had submitted our tax return for 2024 and had the last 3 years for sharing with the mortgage people!
Thursday
I had a phone call with a tax and wealth management advisor who the agents had referred us to. While helpful, they gave us some pointers about inheritance, but ultimately will be unable to help us because we do not plan on being tax domicile in France, at least not for the first few years.
Friday
No house related activity!
I did however get to share our photo gallery with a colleague who asked.
There will not be much for us to do now until the technical reports are received or the owners have completed their inventory and want to negotiate on what else they might want to sell.
Lesson from this week.
Be patient, keep an eye on spam email and do your taxes on time.
